1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and program for correcting a facial image of a person taken by a digital camera.
2. Description of the Background Art
A digital camera records an optical subject image formed by a CCD or the like on a memory such as an internal memory, a memory card and the like. The image photographed by the digital camera is downloaded to, for example, a PC (personal computer), in order to post the image on a World Wide Web home page or print it on a recording paper.
Recently, image correction software is widely used for correcting an image downloaded to a PC. Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 11-17969, for example, discloses a method for correcting color in which when the skin color becomes greenish or blackish due to lighting in the image, only the hue value of a pixel, which is outside of a predetermined range, is replaced or smoothed to correct the skin color. Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 11-250227 discloses the technology in which the pixel image is subjected to smoothing only when dispersion of the pixel values of surrounding pixels is small. This technology makes it possible to smoothly correct bumps and dips in skin due to a wrinkle, a pimple and the like, while defining the borders between areas such as eyes and hair which have different colors from each other.
In the ordinary image correction software, however, when plural correction items are selected, each correction has to be carried out item by item. In other words, for example, taking a case of correcting skin color and hair color, first the skin color is corrected, and then the hair color is corrected. The procedure for correcting operation differs from each correction item. Therefore, there are problems that it takes a lot of time to carry out every selected correction item, and the correcting operation is troublesome.